miðvikudagur, nóvember 08, 2006

This week in the magazine, in “Björk’s Saga,” Alex Ross writes about Björk, Iceland’s best-known cultural export. Here Ross discusses his recent trip to Iceland, and what he discovered about the island nation’s music scene, Björk and beyond.

My first day in Iceland was a freezing horror. Every inch of Reykjavík was covered by a film of ice. I made the mistake of trying to walk from my hotel into the center of town, and after about a mile I felt as though I had been walking for days, like some beaten-down soul in the novels of Halldór Laxness. It seemed like a hallucination when I turned a corner and saw golden light streaming from the windows of a store called 12 Tonar, which is Icelandic for “twelve tones.” The moment I stumbled through the door, a smiling record clerk offered me a cup of espresso; within a few minutes, I was warming my ears with Icelandic music.Iceland may have more musicians per capita than any country in the world. This nation of two hundred and ninety thousand people—roughly the same population as Cincinnati—has ninety music schools, about four hundred choirs, four hundred orchestras and marching bands, and some vast, unknown number of rock bands, jazz combos, and d.j.s. Before Björk ascended to world fame, in the early nineties, it never occurred to many outsiders that such a small country could have such an active music scene. Now Icelandic acts such as Sigur Rós and Múm have gained their own international followings, and the devilishly powerful works of Jón Leifs have begun to appear on orchestral programs around the world. When considered en masse, the music of Iceland is startlingly diverse, yet much of it reflects, in one way or another, what Glenn Gould once called the “idea of north.”Björk began her recording career at the age of eleven. Her disco-, video-, and bibliography now include five major solo records (“Debut,” “Post,” “Homogenic,” “Vespertine,” and “Medúlla”), a soundtrack album (“Selmasongs: Dancer in the Dark”), a greatest-hits record, a remix record (“Telegram”), an album of jazz standards sung mostly in Icelandic (“Gling-Gló”), two box sets (“Family Tree” and “Live Box”), a Björk book (“Björk Book”), a DVD compilation of videos by Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, and other filmmakers (“Volumen”), and assorted other DVDs of live shows. She also made three records with the Sugarcubes and two records with the arty punk band Kukl; the Sugarcubes may have had the alternative-rock hits, but Kukl’s “Holidays in Europe” sounds better over time. It is difficult, if not impossible, to rank Björk’s solo records: each is indestructibly Björk-like, and if you love or hate any one of them you will probably love or hate them all. “Vespertine” is perhaps her most unified album, a work of dazzling sonic design and almost claustrophobic emotional intimacy. “Medúlla,” despite its obsessive focus on the technical possibilities of the human voice, is earthier, more extroverted in tone—“folk music, but without any folk attached,” as Björk told me. “Greatest Hits” is probably the best place to start, with “Vespertine” and “Medúlla” as adventurous follow-ups.When I was in Reykjavík with Björk, I got to meet Ásmundur Jónsson, the manager of the Bad Taste record label, which Björk co-owns with former members of the Sugarcubes. Jónsson has watched Björk’s career since the time of her first pre-teen recording sessions. Alongside Bob Hurwitz, of Nonesuch Records, and Manfred Eicher, of ECM Records, he is one of the great genre-crashing visionaries of the record business. “He is the underestimated hero of Iceland music,” Björk told me. “He is very humble, thinking only of himself and working all the time for Icelandic music. He used to have many sleepless nights cleaning floors of restaurants to pay for the record store, for records, and so on.” She went on, “I owe so much to him, to his hyperventilating enthusiasm for every kind of music—rock, punk, electronic, classical. He has no limitations to his vision.” Once, she explained, Jónsson hired a small orchestra for the fledgling Sigur Rós, at a time when the band seemed unlikely to sell more than a few hundred records. It wasn’t that he perceived an international phenomenon in the making; he simply saw an ambition that deserved to become reality.Sigur Rós came up from obscurity with an almost dangerously hypnotic record entitled “Agaetis Byrjun,”a mix of slow-motion chords and warmly shimmering figuration. Like Björk, this band often hovers at the border between pop music and classical composition. About two years ago, they worked alongside Radiohead in creating a score for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company; their contribution, “Ba Ba / Ti Ki / Di Do,” is available as a single from Geffen Records. Múm inhabits the same ambient world, casting spells with fuzzed-out guitars, a breathy-voiced, Björk-like lead singer (Kristín Anna Valtysdóttir), music boxes, and crunchy samples. “Finally We Are No One” (Bad Taste / Fat Cat), their breakthrough record, was made in part at Valgeir Sigurdsson’s Greenhouse Studios, which is also where Björk’s “Medúlla” began to take shape. “Summer Make Good,” Múm’s follow-up, prolongs the trance another hour.Not all of Icelandic music floats up into the ether: a macho school of guitar bands, including Singapore Sling and Minus, projects a Viking rather than elfin image. There are some strong psychedelic rave-ups on Singapore Sling’s “The Curse of Singapore Sling,” but Minus’s most recent album, “Halldór Laxness,” is straight-ahead rock fit for late nights on MTV2. (What its cocaine ballads have to do with the Nobel Prize-winning novels of Laxness is anyone’s guess.) Einar Örn, the goofball mastermind of Kukl and the Sugarcubes, has outdone all younger rivals with “Ghostigital,” a spectacularly weird venture into hip-hop, with noise rock and free jazz in the mix. It’s about time someone tried to reconcile Dr. Dre and Cecil Taylor.Icelandic classical composition began in earnest with the intensely radical Jón Leifs, who based his ultra-dissonant, percussive sound on ancient folkloric themes. The classic Leifs CD is BIS’s recording of “Hekla” and other pieces, with En Shao conducting the world-class Iceland Symphony. Two other BIS releases, of the “Saga Symphony” and his Organ Concerto, show Leifs’s unruly talent in more controlled form. Contemporary Icelandic composers generally sound tame by comparison, but they have other satisfactions to offer. Jónsi, the lead singer of Sigur Rós, told me that he prefers the finely crafted, formally playful music of Thorkell Sigurbjörnsson to the explosions of Leifs. Jón Nordal is another composer worth investigating: the thickened, suspended tonal chords of his “Invocation to the Rock” might have inspired Björk’s song “An Echo, a Stain.”Unfortunately, most Icelandic new-music CDs aren’t available in American stores. You can, however, order many of them directly from Bad Taste (www.smekkleysa.net), which has recently branched out into classical recording. The label offers a series of CDs by the Hamrahlíd Choir, which is associated with the music school where Björk studied in her childhood. “Icelandic Spring Poem” and “Icelandic Christmas Songs” contain haunting plainspoken settings by Nordal, Sigurbjörnsson, and other leading composers. You can also find a numbingly unadorned collection of folkloric field recordings, “Raddir.” The Germany-based medieval-music ensemble Sequentia takes you back even deeper into the mists of time; its CD “Edda,” on the Deutsche Harmonia Mundi label, re-creates the chanted recitations with which Icelanders once whiled away the dark winter months. Gods, heroes, dragons, dwarfs, a stolen magic ring: the stories of the sagas have been retold many times since.

BUBBI MORTHENS: And she just walked to the microphone, she sang the song and she left the studio. And I tell you, man, it was a breathtaking performance. I said: "I gotta hear it". And I said: "My God, it's unbelievable". It was so good. When she started to sing everything disappeared except her voice. And I said: "Björk will be an international superstar". I knew it from the beginning.Björk met Afi als tienerzangeresje bij de IJslandse gitaarheld Björgvin Gíslason. Da's het enige traditionele popliedje dat ze ooit heeft opgenomen. En de lovende voorspelling was van Bubbi Morthens, een soort IJslandse Bruce Springsteen. Bubbi is alleen in IJsland populair, maar Björk zette haar land op de wereldkaart van de muziek. Eerst met The Sugarcubes en later met haar solocarrière. Daarvóór was er nauwelijks IJslandse popmuziek van betekenis. En ook dat hielp.BJÖRK: Being an Icelandic artist, having Icelandic roots, which are mostly caught up these sagas and mythology, having to face the fact that there is no such thing as Icelandic modern art, so you can sort of invent it. This was a great freedom for me, is that there wasn't any Icelandic pop music. I didn't have to struggle with people like The Beatles or Jimi Hendrix or something. I could just start from scratch, almost.Natuurlijk waren er vóór Björk en The Sugarcubes al groepen die op internationaal succes mikten. Hoe kan het anders in een land met nauwelijks 300.000 inwoners?DR. GUNNI: From the first day of Icelandic music there has been this sense that Iceland is very small and very few people. In one month we have played for everybody. What can we do? We have to take our music abroad where everything is much bigger and much greater, and more money and more groupies and more fun.Dr. Gunni, radioman en rocker.DR. GUNNI: Many funny stories can be told about that. You know, the Icelandic papers printing up articles about some bands that are on the threshold of being the next international superstars. But nothing really happened until I guess '83 even when Mezzoforte had a number 17 song in the UK charts and everybody was almost celebrating in the streets.

IJsland stond bijna op zijn kop toen het in 1983 voor het eerst een internationale hit scoorde met deze Garden party van Mezzoforte. Voor die groep bleef het bij dat ene succes. Maar verrassend genoeg was het een belangrijke les voor de alternatieve scène in IJsland. Dat zegt Jónatan Gardarsson. En hij kan het weten, want hij is televisiemaker en muziekhistoricus en heeft een verleden als platenbaas.JÓNATAN GARDARSSON: With Mezzoforte being not so popular in Iceland but being able to establish a market in England and Europe and even in Japan and the rest of the world, with such a limited impulse from the local market, people saw that this was probably the best way. So instead of going into the middle, playing middle-of-the-road songs, they started looking at the alternative sides. And that has been the outcome more or less. There are of course lots and lots of bands playing middle-of-the-road music, popular music, but they have never ever been able to break from the Icelandic market. They are completely local artists. What is the export of Iceland is more or less what's underground, alternative, someone who has everything to win, nothing to loose. Because there's no market here for them anyway.In '83 was Mezzoforte geen doorsnee pop in IJsland. Maar de eerste eigenwijze snotneuzen zaten in Hljómar, een band rond gitarist Gunnar Thordarsson uit Kevlavík. Daar is de internationale luchthaven van Reykjavík en in de jaren zestig zat daar de radio van de NAVO-basis.JÓNATAN GARDARSSON: They were influenced by the base, because the base had a radio station. They played a constant output of popular American, British music, whatever there was. And they were influenced from that. And Gunnar said when he made a contract with Svafar Gests, the drummer from the KK Band who started his own record company: "We're not going to play music that you're going to choose for us, we're going to play our own music". And he said: "Okay, give me a listen". And they played some of the songs and they were all in English, because they wanted to be like the Beatles, sing in English. And Svafar Gests said: "Okay, these are good tunes, but you need Icelandic lyrics". So he had one of his colleagues do some lyrics for them and those songs became instant hits.

Dit is Hljómar, zeg maar: de IJslandse Beatles. Het was de eerste echte rockband van daar, compleet met een flinke dosis "street credibility" en een bassist die nooit eerder een instrument had bespeeld.Hljómar, revolutionair klonken ze misschien niet, maar ze speelden wel als eersten ook eigen songs, in het IJslands bovendien. En dat was toen ongehoord. Hljómars eerste elpee uit 1967 werd opgenomen en gemixt in Londen in amper 16 uur tijd. Want het gros van de IJslandse bevolking had niet eens een platenspeler, laat staan dat er opnamestudio's waren. Gitarist en componist Gunnar Thordarson:GUNNAR THORDARSON: There were quite a lot of bands, oh yes. There were bands all over, yeah. From 1963-64 it was blooming. But there were not a lot of records done because there was no studio here. The old public radio station and the hall in the public radio station were so alive that you could record really there. It was just for piano and voice. We started in this big hall there. We did two singles. And then we demanded that we go abroad and we recorded in England.Het beloofde land overzee lonkte niet alleen met studio's, maar ook met een veel grotere markt. En zo veranderde Hljómar in Thor's Hammer.GUNNAR THORDARSON: Because the Icelandic record company here had a sort of a deal with Parlophone in England, and there was a film made about Hljómar. The songs of Thor's Hammer were mainly written for that film. There's a strange story about this film. It's never been seen since. It's lost and the guy who did it You know, everybody is trying to get this film but he's not here. So that's how Thor's Hammer came: because this film was going to promote it and so all the songs were in English. We usually sang in Icelandic. You know, it was time to hit the big time.Maar het verhoopte succes bleef uit. Tot dertig jaar later, vertelt Jónatan Gardarsson.JÓNATAN GARDARSSON: They did some singles for EMI that didn't do anything, really. And now they're known as the best unknown beat band of that era. And what specific about them is that Gunnar Thordarson, its guitarist, has always been a maniac for new instruments, new gadgets. He got this fuzz box, one of the first fuzz boxes in the world. And he played the fuzz box like there is nothing else to be played. So it's a bit punkish in a sense. And this was in 65-66. So no Icelander liked their music. They couldn't get any attention abroad, but now after like 30 years people are listening to this and saying: "Wow, why were these guys not famous?"

MEGAS: At the same time I was digging Elvis Presley, in '56, Laxness, the literature master of Iceland, he was reading on the radio his a mock heroic tale of two Icelandic heroes. And it was a bacchanalia of words. I had that magic chant and that Joycean orgy, that bacchanalia of words. I liked both things, but at that time it didn't seem possible to put all this bacchanalia into pop music.Maar van Bob Dylan leerde Megas dat je poëzie en literatuur wél in popmuziek kan vatten, al wilde hij eerst zijn oren niet geloven.

MEGAS: And I didn't believe that this brilliantine haired young man could write these lyrics or make these songs. I thought it was some plot, an American capitalist plot of some professors and geniuses writing some tunes and words. But soon I knew that he really made these same songs.Megas zelf gaf zijn eerste concert in 1969 voor een publiek van linkse, antiautoritaire rebellen. Een paar jaar later verhuisde hij met zijn vrouw naar Oslo en met de hulp van wat Noorse studenten en muzikanten nam hij zijn debuut op. De plaat verscheen in 1972 en werd in IJsland door de critici ontvangen als de slechtste aller tijden.MEGAS: This first record of mine was just played a little bit and then there was a meeting of the music authority of the radio and they banned this record totally. I still don't know why, but they thought it was so absolutely untasteful that they didn't They were in the habit of taking nails and destroying the tracks that were bad on some record. But this record was not touched at all, it was just taken away. Maar vijf jaar later was Megas zowat untouchable. Toen nam hij Á bleikum náttkjólum op. Die plaat behoort nu tot de top drie van IJsland, naast Debut van Björk en Ágætis byrjun van Sigur Rós.

EGILL ÓLAFSSON: We have this huge collection that was collected in the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century. A huge collection of Icelandic folksongs, hundreds of them in fact. And Thursaflokkurinn, the band I formed in 1977, we used some of those songs, expanded them and made them ours, but with the old lyrics and the melodies and so on.Meer dan 1200 oeroude songs verzameld door een priester Niet echt gesneden koek voor een rockband in de jaren zeventig, zou je denken, maar in IJsland ligt dat anders.EGILL ÓLAFSSON: You see, I mean, we have a rich tradition in making books. We were actually the only nation in Europe in the 13th century that were making books and writing the sagas of Swedish, Danish and Norwegian kings, and the history of Scandinavia as a whole. The mythology was written here as well. It was a verbal thing before that. This all came out in books as far back as the 13th century. And therefore we have this strong tradition and respect for everything that is written. En bovendien is het IJslands van vandaag niet wezenlijk verschillend van de taal van 7 eeuwen terug. Het is alsof wij nog zouden spreken in het Nederlands van hebban olla vogala EGILL ÓLAFSSON: We are living here on this big island with a small population and with a language that is old. And we have kept the language by protecting it. (Protecting it was) inventing new words. We don't use the word "TV" for example. And we don't use the word "computer" like you do all over Europe. We use the word "tölva", which is based on a very very old word of "völva", who was the fortune teller. When you're only with like 280.000 people it's so easy to ruin the whole culture with taking away our language. We speak the old Danish tongue of the Vikings. It has changed of course through the centuries, but we still can read books that were written in 1300.Maar vergis je niet: IJslanders zijn geen navelstaarders. Dat respect voor de oude cultuur gaat gepaard met een brede kijk op de wereld en open oren voor andere geluiden, net zoals in de Braziliaanse Nordeste.

Thursaflokkerinn in 1982. Na deze plaat zette Egill Ólafsson een punt achter de groep want zijn eerste band Studmenn kwam terug bij elkaar voor een film. Een low budget road movie over de competitie tussen een vrouwenband en een mannengroep. Het werd een enorm succes.EGILL ÓLAFSSON: This changed our lives of course, because we had been struggling up till then. Because of course in Iceland everything in music is on small scale, except for the music itself. Because you don't have many places to play and you don't have that big audience and you were playing for the same audience over and over again. This means that you have to change programs and you have to invent songs and come up with new songs. It keeps us busy.Studmenn is een van de betere voorbeelden van wat in IJsland zelf erg populair is. En dat zijn niet de exportgroepen als Sigur Rós of The Sugarcubes.SIGGI BALDURSSON: Iceland has his own sort of pop bands that play much more normal sounding pop music. And those bands have always had a big audience and still do.Siggi Baldursson, vroeger drummer van The Sugarcubes.SIGGI BALDURSSON: And there's a certain culture there which is called "sveitaballa band", which are bands that do a mixture of their own stuff and a lot of covers. Sveitaball is actually a country ball, a country dance. The tradition is to go around the countryside of Iceland and play these big balls which have all the farmers and all the fish workers. And everybody that is living outside the Reykjavík area goes to these big, huge balls in the countryside. There's like crazy drinking and fighting and sex, you know. It's a madhouse, it's a madhouse really.Een sveitaball is dus een soort Vlaamse kermis met muziek uit de IJslandse Tien om te zien. En toch was er een tijd dat ook alternatieve bands daar speelden. "Al was het maar om rond te komen" zegt muziekhistoricus Jónatan Gardarsson.JÓNATAN GARDARSSON: Those bands in the fifties and sixties, they were the same bands that were the most popular bands playing alternative music, playing jazz, playing punkish beat music or whatever. But they switched to sveitaballa band, to a band that was playing dances and gave the entertainment force into it when they needed to do so. But just before the dance they would play their thing. So these were the same guys more or less. Now it's more divided, you wouldn't have Sigur Rós play a dance like that.

Taytum og Tryllum van de eerste Studmenn-elpee in 1975. De groep behoort nog steeds tot het legertje popsterren van IJsland. Maar een van de kleurrijkste figuren buiten het sveitaball-circuit is Bubbi Morthens. Tegenwoordig rijdt hij rond in z'n chique jeep. Hij is bokscommentator bij de televisie. Hij doodt zijn vrije tijd met zalm te vissen. En hij maakt wat muziek: brave folk, country en zelfs latin. Maar 20 jaar geleden was hij de wilde zanger van Utangarsmenn, The Outsiders. En die werd in 2000 uitgeroepen tot "beste IJslandse groep van de twintigste eeuw".BUBBI MORTHENS: I started with a band called The Outsiders and we used to play music that was more related to Iggy Pop than more the original punk scene like The Sex Pistols or Generation X or something like that. We opened up the door for everybody. Without The Outsiders nothing would have happened. That is just the way it is. It's not because that we were so good or something, but we were just the right people in the right time.

BUBBI MORTHENS: I started to write songs about my life as a fisherman and a worker, living in the factories and the people I was travelling with, factory from factory. Also because the songs that has been sung about the fisherman's life were not quite telling the truth. The truth was it was a hard core, slavery, a very rough and tough job. Not everybody could handle it. I started to do lyrics about that. My hands were cold and freezing. When I had spare time I was smoking my hash, drinking booze, fucking girls, have a fight, street fights and fighting up in the factory. You know that was the way we lived. It was a very, very, rough, macho, brutal way of surviving.Bubbi Morthens in 1980: een nummer uit zijn debuut Isbjarnarblús of Icebear blues. Daarvóór was hij een soort folkzanger, sterk beïnvloed door Megas en de Amerikaanse rootsmuziek van Robert Johnson, Leadbelly en Dylan. Hij werkte in de vismijnen en schreef songs over zijn harde leven. Op die eerste plaat speelde hij een deel van die nummers solo en akoestisch, maar de andere helft was met een band. En omdat het zo goed klikte, besloten ze verder te gaan als The Outsiders. Maar een podium vinden, dat was andere koek.BUBBI MORTHENS: They said: "No, no, we don't like your attitude, the way you dress, the way you talk". And also we were doing a lot of drugs and we were not hiding it.The Outsiders vonden uiteindelijk een podium in Hotel Borg in hartje Reykjavík. Dat poepchique hotel werd in 1933 gebouwd door een voormalige worstelaar. Het is de meest onwaarschijnlijke plaats die je je kan voorstellen voor een punkconcert. Maar de try-out was helemaal uitverkocht en daarom mochten ze de rest van die winter elke week één avond vullen.BUBBI MORTHENS: And when the deal was on we started to call other musicians, punk groups, people that were playing in the garage. And we said: "Hey, you can come and join us, you can play with us". And so we started to bring all kinds of group with us playing here and all kinds of acts. Poets and old Icelandic rimur between punk bands! Amazing time, very nice time. So this hotel actually was the mother load for the punk bands of the golden area in 1980 in Iceland.

Onmiskenbaar Björk met een nummer uit 1984 en sinds vorig jaar ook te vinden op haar verzamelbox Family tree. De gitarist was Gulli, alias Gud Krist, die we straks nog tegenkomen in dit tweede deel van Iceland on the rocks. Vandaag hoor je de saga van The Sugarcubes, de groep die aan de basis lag van Björks wereldfaam. En die heeft ze voor een groot deel te danken aan haar sterk individualisme.BJÖRK: We never had an army in Iceland and the reason is because we can't even march. Everyone has his own identity and own character in Iceland. And I come from that sort of background.Het is geen toeval dat de 280.000 IJslanders met hun voornaam in het telefoonboek staan gerangschikt. En dat de achternaam wordt gevormd door de voornaam van de vader met daarachter "son" of "dóttir", zoals Björk Gudmundsdóttir, de dochter van Gudmund. Want IJsland is een land van individuen, dat zegt ook Sugarcubes-drummer Siggi Baldursson.SIGGI BALDURSSON: There's a saying in Iceland that Iceland is full of small kings. And individuality is certainly highly valued there. We're not a very socialist country, I'm afraid. But that's good in a sense that people think they can make a difference. My generation of Icelandic musicians, which counts me and Björk and Einar Örn and basically The Sugarcubes and other bands surrounding this, comes out of a very interesting part of Icelandic music history. Which is sort of the post punk area, where everybody grabbed an instrument, everybody wanted to play music, regardless of whether they could or not.

Tappi Tikarrass, Björks bandje uit het begin van de jaren 80. Dit kwam uit de soundtrack van Rokk í Reykjavík, een documentaire van Fridrik Thor Fridriksson over de prille punk- en new-wavescène in en om Hotel Borg.KRISTJAN BLÖNDAL: The punk scene in Iceland, nobody was expecting it. It just happened. And it was full grown in six months. With bands like Purrkur Pillnikkk, Tappi Tikarrass, Theyr and endless other bands.Kristjan Blöndal van de voormalige platenzaak Hljomalind.KRISTJAN BLÖNDAL: At the same time when the scene was at its peak, they made a movie called "Rokk í Reykjavík" from Fridrik Thor, the Icelandic filmmaker who was nominated for the Oscar awards. And the punk scene just united around that movie. So for the first time you had a very isolated punk scene, which had many, many bands in it. But in a capital with like 150.000 people at that time, having such a good scene, so tight, and making a documentary at the peak That's amazing, it's never been done before.

ÁSI JONSSON: With Purrkur Pillnikk, when the band had played for six months, they had played in almost every school in Reykjavík and even most of the villages outside Reykjavík that are built of more than 300 inhabitants. Actually they performed a lot. There was an excitement around the band during the first months. And it was really hard after that to experience any new things from the music scene over here. We had basically done everything and it kind of took a year to release three albums and two EP's. Basically they had done most of the things that a band from Iceland at that time could, or even more. It was a very active and hectic period.En dat voorbeeld van Purrkur Pillnikk en Tappi Tikarrass kreeg onmiddellijk navolging, zegt Kristjan Blöndal.KRISTJAN BLÖNDAL: All of a sudden all the kids in Iceland said like: "Okay, I can buy myself a guitar, go into my garage, call a couple of my friends and start a band". And then they just made a band, staying in the garage for half a year, a year or whatever. And then you play on concerts. You don't know the notes or anything, you just do it. And it works!

Die punkattitude leeft nog altijd in IJsland, daar hebben we 't volgende maandag nog over. Toch was punk in IJsland niet helemaal hetzelfde als punk in Engeland. Het kwam een paar jaar later. En er was nog een verschil, zegt Siggi Baldursson.SIGGI BALDURSSON: Punk applied to English sociology. The whole hierarchy of "Fuck the Queen" and all doesn't apply to Iceland. Iceland is a small community of fishermen with a lot of snot in between. It is basically a rich fishing village, with a lot of culture and a lot of interesting stuff, but that is the reality of it. There isn't really a hierarchy in Iceland. There is now because of capitalism. Now there is a lot of rich people and poor people, but it didn't used to be like that, not in 1980. So the whole punk thing was a bit of a charade. But it was creatively interesting for music.

HILMAR ÖRN HILMARSSON: Theyr was actually formed as a thing to raise money for scientific research for the guitarist in Theyr, who is an electric engineer and a total genius. Gulli was always inventing these weird and wonderful things. We never managed to finance his stuff decently enough, but we were basically building, at that time, prototypes of samplers and software-based instruments. One of the ideas was a string instrument where the strings are ten kilometres long and how it would sound in an atmosphere of Jupiter for instance.Gulli goochelde met algoritmes en bedacht geluiden van onmogelijke en virtuele instrumenten. Hij maakt nog altijd muziek, maar nu is hij toch vooral bezig met groene energie. Hij zat wel nog in Kukl, de groep die ontstond uit de resten van de punkscène.SIGGI BALDURSSON: Yes, at that time, between 1980 and '83, there were a lot of bands. Every garage had a band in it. But comes '83 this whole thing had filtered down a bit. Kukl was a sort of super group put together out of some remaining bands. It was my band Theyr, Einar's band Purrkur Pillnikk, Björk's band Tappi Tikarrass. These bands died out and sort of filtered in to this band called Kukl. We were trying to carve out a very special sounding music that was very hardcore and with no compromises.

artiest: KUKLsong: Open the window and let the spirit fly freecd: The eyelabel/referentie: Crass/import/19841

BIGGI STEINARSSON: When I was 14 and I learned of them, I was like "wow!", you know. It was just like: "this is really interesting". What was so special about Kukl was that they were a group of very talented individuals. It was just a mixture, a soup of these people. There was a special chemistry. Kukl weren't a popular band here. That's the funny thing. They probably sold less albums then all of the bands, when they were released. But they were a kind of band that influenced people in the long run. And I think that is the goal of every Icelandic musician now. It's like: "Ah, who cares we only sold 250 records, we're doing this for the timeline". That's the kind of band Kukl were.En zelf zegt Einar Örn over Kukl: We zijn misschien meer een soort inspiratiebron dan een echte muzikale invloed. Waar het om ging, was die punk attitude.EINAR ÖRN BENEDIKTSSON: What we did was just a continuation of punk ethic. The original punk ethic was: do it yourself. And from there on we just applied the ethic of do it yourself to what we were doing. And not just thinking about it. We actually did it. We did go abroad. We did work regular jobs to be able to do our music as a hobby. Instead of going abroad with a family we went abroad with a band and that was our holiday.En ook Björk herinnert zich nog hoe ze overdag twee of drie jobs deed om 's avonds muziek te kunnen maken.BJÖRK: Selling newspapers, work in the fish factory, in the Coca-Cola factory. I had my boy of two months old, tight on me, selling books, Icelandic sagas in houses. It didn't feel like it at that point, but looking back on it now it was always in order to be able to do a record. Or we would save up. I remember being in a band called Kukl and we were all doing different jobs. We were all saving up for a year and then buying a van and driving in Europe and doing gigs with Einstürzende Neubauten and then all our dreams came true. Little black punk squads with ten audiences well worth working a year for.

SIGGI BALDURSSON: Then we decided to form up a pop band to make some money for the label. We put together this band that we called The Sugarcubes, which is the silliest name we could figure out. We thought: "Let's start a silly pop band to make some money for the label". Einar Melax, the keyboard player, came up with this. He used to drink his coffee old Icelandic style, which is: you put a sugar cube in your mouth and you drink your coffee black and you basically suck it through a sugar cube, (slurp), like that.En zo bekeerde dat stel rauwe postpunkers zich tot zoete pop. Siggi en ook Einar Örn kunnen er nog altijd goed om lachen, ook al was het nooit echt als grap bedoeld.EINAR ÖRN BENEDIKTSSON: The Sugarcubes did not start as a joke. It started more as sort of a tension reliever for us, to relive the tension of being bored. We wanted some action in our lives. And why not entertain ourselves by playing something that we could never imagine that we could play, which was pure pop, doing it our way though. SIGGI BALDURSSON: And then all of a sudden we were pop stars. And it was sort of a joke; we really thought it was funny. I still remember Einar's first reaction when our first single was named single of the week in NME. He said: "Oh shit!".

Birthday, die eerste singel van The Sugarcubes. De IJslandse versie uit 1986 verkocht 276 exemplaren. Maar een jaar later zat Einar voor z'n studies in Londen en liet hij het nummer horen aan zijn goede vriend Derek Birkett. Die begon toen net met One Little Indian en een van de eerste releases van dat label was die Engelse versie van Birthday. De plaat werd een enorm succes en dat overviel The Sugarcubes wel een beetje.SIGGI BALDURSSON: All of a sudden there was this crazy interest about the band. But for us, for all the time that we had spent in Kukl, we had never really gotten very much through the hardcore indie scene in England. The thing was that we thought we were doing much more exciting things in Kukl than we were doing with the Sugarcubes. The Sugarcubes were much more a sort of flippant idea for us. We were trying to make pop music, which for us was like a travesty. Almost like an absurd idea. In Kukl we thought we were really changing the world, making this very important original music that sounded like nothing else. And then you come down with an idea like The Sugarcubes and we are trying to make these silly pop songs and all of a sudden people go: "Waw, that's cool!". So for us, we just went: "Oh shit, that's just perfect, isn't it?".

Die hele Sugarcubes popperiode van 1986 tot '92 was dus een soort spel van een groep artiesten die eigenlijk veel meer in hun mars hadden. Een spel dat ze drie albums lang volhielden.EINAR ÖRN BENEDIKTSSON: We played the game for a very long time. Sometimes we said: "Fuck the system". And then in the end the system fucked us because we spent all the money we got. But, you know, so it goes. We're all still alive and we're all happy. We decided to stay friends instead of financial buddies. And so the band stopped to work, but still we're all good friends today.

artiest: SUGARCUBESsong: Goldcd: Stick around for joylabel/referentie: One Little Indian/Universal/TPLP30CD

Gold uit Stick around for joy, de zwanezang van The Sugarcubes. Björk was toen al aan het broeden op een soloplaat en ook voor de anderen had de travestie lang genoeg geduurd. The "Cubes" waren in 1992 meer business dan muziek geworden en dat was nooit de bedoeling geweest.BJÖRK: When I left Iceland when I was 27 I'd been hanging out with passionate music people that were so anti-commercial that if their records sold more than three copies they'd betrayed their soul. So I was brought up with that almost fascist thing that if you become famous you're lost. I thought it was very interesting, until I was 27. Then I said: "Wait a bit, that's too easy, just to paint yourself in a corner and just be there forever". I guess I reached out when I moved to London. I was 27 and I actually wanted to communicate. I always had at the back of my head that I was communicating with people's grandmothers, just like the average normal person.Hoe het Björk verging na The Sugarcubes weet iedereen. Solo zette ze IJsland nog duidelijker op de internationale muziekkaart. Maar ook de vrienden die ze achterliet, drukken tot op vandaag hun stempel op de IJslandse scène. Dat vindt ook componist Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson.HILMAR ÖRN HILMARSSON: I think basically what happened around 1980, slowly there was this nucleus of people that formed and which are still going strong after 23 years. Looking back it's the same 10-15 people who have been behind most of the progressive things in Iceland. It's a nice, incestuous group in a way that everybody works with everybody else within that group. It's this ongoing chemical process that started around 1980, which is still going on and still going strong.

Hún jörd uit Von, het debuut van Sigur Rós. Het was 1997, vijf jaar na het einde van The Sugarcubes. Sigur Rós had drie jaar aan de plaat gewerkt. Het was Sugarcubes-gitarist Thor Eldon die de groep had ontdekt. Von kwam dan ook uit op Smekkleysa, het label van The Sugercubes. Om de opnamen te bekostigen, hebben de muzikanten onder meer de studio moeten schilderen. Sigur Rós begon als heavy metalband onder de naam The B Spiders. Zij hadden de IJslandse Rock Rally gewonnen. Musiktilraunir heet het daar en dat betekent "muziekexperimenten". Die wedstrijd bestaat al 21 jaar en is erg populair bij nieuwe groepen. De laatste keer deden er maar liefst 60 aan mee.THODDI: A funny thing, there's been this tendency or this thing going through all these competitions, years back: 80 or 90% of them is metal, hardcore metal. It's an unbelievable big scene. And most of the young bands that pop up now are kind of heavy metal, hardcore, rap hardcore or something. Every year most of the bands are like that. And then there are bands that are doing something really different.Dat was Thoddi, een van de juryleden en organisatoren van de wedstrijd. Hij speelt zelf in drie bands: Kanada, The Funerals en Trabant.THODI: There are some bands that are still playing that have won a few years back. But it's the beginning. They are newcomers, they are new people, new musicians who for the first time make their sometimes first concert. And from that they will maybe quit and form a new band. That's usually the way it has been with this competition, but it's a really good thing for the Icelandic music life.De winnaars van die IJslandse rockrally krijgen studiotijd of een platendeal. En de finale wordt bovendien rechtstreeks uitgezonden op de nationale radio. Een van de blijvers is de band Maus. Ze wonnen Musiktilraunir in '94 en onlangs verscheen hun vijfde album Musick.artiest: MAUSsong: How far is too farcd: Musicklabel/referentie: Smekkleysa/import/SM104CD

Maus met How far is too far uit hun hun jongste cd Musick, met c-k op het einde. De teksten gaan over de muziekindustrie, hoe artiesten communiceren via muziek en hoe muziek je leven kan bepalen. Biggi Steinarsson, de zanger van Maus, vindt het belangrijk dat iedere luisteraar begrijpt waar hij het over heeft, ook de niet-IJslanders. En daarom zijn de songs op de nieuwe plaat bijna allemaal in het Engels. Al schrijft hij ze eerst in het IJslands.BIGGI STEINARSSON: I write all my lyrics in Icelandic and I always have. But good lyrics are good lyrics and it doesn't matter what language you're singing. And I'm kind of scared of that nationalism thing, you know. I just don't want to be a part of something like "I only sing in Icelandic because I'm from Iceland". I would never do that. I sing and the meaning is the thing I want to get across. My lyrics aren't really 100% translated. I don't translate them word for word. They're about the same thing and I might use different metaphors for the same thing.De meeste IJslandse groepen zingen in het Engels, maar lang niet allemaal doen ze dat zo bewust als Biggi van Maus. Het liefst zou hij van elk album twee versies willen maken, een IJslandse en een Engelse, zoals Björk en The Sugarcubes dat ooit deden. Maar als daar geen geld voor is, dan moet je een keuze maken.BIGGI STEINARSSON: You have to define for yourself, when you're making an album: "What do I wish to accomplish here?" We sort of hold up at the moment. For us it's either always release albums in Iceland and just have fewer and fewer sales over the next years. Or try and expand. That must be the goal of every artist: to try and expand instead of getting locked inside your box.

Voor Halldór Laxness werkte Mínus met producer Birgir Örn Thoroddsen. Iedereen kent die als Bibbi. Hij is een soort IJslandse Steve Albini. Ook Maus en Singapore Sling behoren tot zijn klantenkring. En daarnaast maakt hij zelf nog muziek, solo, maar ook met Einar Örn van The Sugarcubes in Ghostigital. Voor Bibbi zorgt het isolement van IJsland niet voor muzikale armoede. Integendeel!BIBBI: Mostly, because we are a small nation and things like that, we want to be on top of it. We want to know what's happening. So people are really trying to be with the time. Also when you're in a closed community and everybody knows each other, you don't want to do something that is false. People say like: "I know you, why are you doing this kind of music, this is not the true you." So people tend to try to do more what is really in their hearts, but also exploring what is in the big world.En die openheid van de IJslanders beschrijft Magnus van de groep Atingere met een metafoor die bekend in de oren klinkt, toch voor liefhebbers van mangue beat!MAGNUS: Sometimes I see Iceland as some sort of antenna. And they're just picking up influences all over the world. They want to be doing things that are progressive. They're trying to find things that are interesting because it has a certain amount of new elements in it. And I think they're trying to filter out these peaks of progress in common music and try to add something to it.

Counterpoint uit de titelloze cd van Kanada enkele jaren terug. De band leidt voorlopig een sluimerend bestaan, maar de leden zijn wel actief in Trabant en The Funerals. Die maken alle twee heel andere muziek. En waarom ook niet, vindt Viddi, de bassist van beide groepen.VIDDI: If you make music in a sauna you will have sauna music. But if you make music while having sex on XTC you make techno or something. I think a person should be able to go to a sauna and then two or three hours later go home and have sex on XTC. It's still the same person.Tot vorig jaar werkte Kristjan Blöndal in de platenzaak Hljomalind. Die bestaat niet meer, maar was 11 jaar lang dé plek in Reykjavík om je te verdiepen in undergroundmuziek van overal. En volgens Kristjan is de muziekscène in IJsland veel groter dan ze op het eerste zicht lijkt.KRISTJAN BLÖNDAL: you will never grasp the whole scene. There are probably 10 or 12 real good bands in the garage now at the moment. Nobody has heard of them and they're going to be in the garage for one year and they will play a concert. And everybody will go to be like: "Wow, where did that come from?"Muzikanten in IJsland hebben alle vrijheid om te experimenteren. Dat zegt ook Gummi Steingrímsson, journalist én zanger en toetsenman van de groep Ske.

GUMMI STEINGRÍMSSON: There's no reason for an Icelandic musician not to do exactly what he wants to do. Because you're not going to sell much anyway. This is a very peculiar kind of freedom that you have, but I think many musicians in Iceland experience this. Both Björk en Sigur Rós have developed their own tone, but they have a background doing lots of experiments and so on. The music scene has been like this for years in Iceland, very energetic. People were even predicting that this would probably stop. "Björk, that's the peak, and then probably this will go away." But it hasn't happened and it is still flourishing, more than ever, I think.Bands in IJsland blijven langer in hun garage om aan hun muziek te sleutelen. Ze komen er pas uit als ze d'er echt klaar voor zijn.KRISTJAN BLÖNDAL: It's such a weird city and it's so small that people don't want to get slapped in the face. They want to come with something really prepared and really good. Because you get a critic in the morning paper. And if it's bad, everybody is going to be talking about it the day after.IJsland heeft twee grote kranten en twee muziekbladen. Bij alle vier komt muziek uitvoerig aan bod. En zeker niet alleen de grote namen, zegt producer Bibbi:BIBBI: What is quite interesting here in Iceland because of the smallness, is that the big media also help smaller acts. Marginal or experimental bands, they actually get into the big papers. It doesn't matter for the big papers if it's a small or big band. The really, really hot band or the really, really small experimental band, they get the same coverage.

Dat was Slowblow, de band van Dagur en Orri. Orri Jonsson is fotograaf en Dagur regisseerde de film Noi albinoi. Voor hen is muziek gewoon een uitlaatklep naast hun andere bezigheden, zegt Orri:ORRI: It's all about expressing yourself. They're just different tools. I think it's very healthy that you should express yourself in more than one medium.

Verder is het in IJsland bijna ondenkbaar dat je van muziek alleen kan leven. En tot voor kort was er ook geen overheid die de muziekscène subsidieert. Jónsi van Sigur Rós vergelijkt de IJslandse situatie graag met de Deense:JÓNSI BIRGISSON: In Denmark for example the government helps everybody. If they're doing a record they get money and the rehearsal space is also really cheap. And there are a lot of places to play in Denmark, kind of sponsored by the government. They have really nice equipments, nice PA's. But there's nothing like this in Iceland. The Icelandic government just doesn't know there exists good music in Iceland. It's really weird actually. They're so far behind. For that reason people have to do everything by themselves. This is nice too, because you learn so much on your own. I think it's really good for you actually to do everything yourselves, in the beginning at least."Doe je zin en doe het zelf", dat zijn de toverwoorden voor IJslandse muzikanten buiten het commerciële circuit. Pas de laatste jaren groeit bij politici het besef dat het loont om in muziek te investeren. Zo sponsort de stad Reykjavík Iceland Airwaves. Dat festival heeft jaarlijks in oktober plaats. De bedoeling is om nieuwe IJslandse bands aan buitenlandse journalisten, concertpromotoren en platenfirma's voor te stellen. En zo verging het ook Singapore Sling.

Singapore Sling met No soul man uit The curse of Singapore Sling. In de Verenigde Staten is die plaat uit op Stinky Records. Dat contract versierde de band dankzij Iceland Airwaves.EINAR KRISTJANSSON: The whole idea of the Airwaves Festival is like a festival for Icelandic bands to export or be spotted. Iceland is so isolated and they have this festival. Icelandair sponsors it and they give flights and stuff like that to journalists and label people so they can come and see us. The whole festival is sponsored by Icelandair and the government to get Icelandic music to be heard outside of Iceland.De man achter Airwaves is Thorsteinn Stephensen. Met zijn promotiebedrijf Mr. Destiny organiseert hij het festival sinds 1999. Het begon allemaal toen Thorsteinn de tweede cd van Gus Gus moest promoten bij de buitenlandse pers.THORSTEINN STEPHENSEN: Then we realised this was probably the best way to promote Icelandic bands. Because a lot of bands are travelling abroad and are playing in front of an audience that doesn't know them. It's usually badly promoted because nobody knows the band and so forth. So we figured that if we turn this around and invite everybody to come to Iceland you have a mixture of two things. You have a great show and you have great experience for people in a new country with a different atmosphere from most European countries.Het idee sloeg aan. De eerste keer was een heel bescheiden weekend met een handvol groepen en 3 à 400 toeschouwers. Nu, vier jaar later, is het een vierdaags festival met 5000 bezoekers waaronder een 500-tal buitenlandse professionals. Verder groeien kan bijna niet, want de hotels zitten nu al propvol. Ruim 20 % van de kosten wordt betaald door de nationale luchtvaartmaatschappij Icelandair. Dat is een privé onderneming die veel beter dan de IJslandse overheid beseft wat de toeristische aantrekkingskracht van muziek kan zijn.THORSTEINN STEPHENSEN: To get publicity in foreign press is the most valuable thing for them. Not that many people are writing about the restaurants in Iceland or the hot tubs or the hotels or anything. It's the artists that attract the biggest attention.Het toerisme in IJsland is de laatste tien jaar dan ook erg veranderd. Het cliché vroeger was dat van een oude Duitser die nog een laatste reis waagde. Tegenwoordig zie je er vooral jonge toeristen uit de Verenigde Staten en Engeland. Over precies één maand start de vijfde editie van Iceland Airwaves. Als je 't programma wilt zien, surf je naar www.icelandairwaves.com. Dit is alvast één van de boeiende groepen die er gaan spelen: Kimono.

Japanese policeman uit mineur-aggressif, het debuut van Kimono. De plaat moet binnenkort verschijnen op Smekkleysa en een Belgische licentie hangt in de lucht. Net zoals vorig jaar speelt Kimono ook dit jaar op Airwaves. Zanger en gitarist Alex MacNeil is Canadees, maar woont al een paar jaar in IJsland. Hij vindt dat de jongelui daar iets hebben met beroemd zijn.ALEX MACNEIL: If you go into a bar and you look around, everybody looks like they're in a band, even if they're not. You can look at somebody and say: "Oh yeah, he looks like he's in The Leaves or something". And then you look over at the other table: "Yeah, he kind of looks like he could be in another band". People cultivate this image of rock stardom, even if they're working in a computer company or doing something else. People really like the idea of being in bands, so they end up doing that.Iedereen beroemd! Of toch bijna. Einar Örn, de vroegere zanger van The Sugarcubes, vindt trouwens dat teveel IJslandse groepen op buitenlands succes hopen.EINAR ÖRN BENEDIKTSSON: They think there is this unwritten agreement that Icelanders should be able to be famous abroad. That is not the fact. I think people forget that they need to develop and mature. They should concentrate on doing good music in Iceland. Therefore people are coming here.

Pagan poetry van Björk uit Vespertine van twee jaar geleden. Het nummer verwijst naar iets dat ingebakken lijkt in de natuur van elke IJslander, namelijk poëzie.BJÖRK: I think any Icelander is a poet, as I have said before. Everybody in Iceland at least sometimes reads the poetry books and the language pretty fierce. This has become our identity through the ages.En hoe poëzie in IJsland ook een grote invloed heeft op de muziek van vandaag, hoor je in dit vierde deel van Iceland on the rocks.In IJsland is er nauwelijks traditionele volksmuziek. En dat beetje dat er is, is vooral vocaal. Want eeuwenlang waren er geen muziekinstrumenten. IJsland was tot de jaren '40 in alle opzichten een arm land met alleen visserij en landbouw. Bovendien hielden die ingevoerde instrumenten het niet lang uit in dat klimaat. En daardoor ontstond een heel eigen zangtraditie.SIGURDUR FLOSASON: There were in the twentieth century various research projects where researchers would go out on the countryside and talk to old people. They told stories and sung their songs. There are some people who are singing religious tunes, psalms. But there are also old men who are singing and telling tales of pornographic nature. And there are drinking songs and songs to sooth children and to scare children. There are things that have to do with old believes about trolls and elves and figures like that.Dat was jazzmuzikant Sigurdur Flosason. Samen met Pétur Grétarsson heeft hij zich verdiept in die veldopnames. Die volksliederen werden gezongen door oudere mensen die ze op hun beurt van hun ouders en grootouders hadden geleerd.SIGURDUR FLOSASON: So it's a way to be here in the modern times directly connected with the tradition of the ages that stretches back really several centuries. What we wanted to do was to dig out this music and show that there is more of it than most people think. Also that it's quite unique and interesting and curious. And that new things can also be done with it.

Het knutselwerk van Sigurdur Flosason en Pétur Grétarsson met oude volkliedjes. In IJsland is dat een nogal verborgen traditie, zegt Sigurur.SIGURDUR FLOSASON: It also has to do with the fact that there is an overemphasis on literature. We think of ourselves as a nation of great literature and great history in literature. So the musical traditions fall into the shadow of literature. We're so busy bragging and being proud of our literature that music somehow isn't really discussed, old traditional music.

De eeuwenoude saga's en de religieuze poëzie van de Edda maken wel nog steeds deel uit van de hedendaagse cultuur in IJsland. Dat heeft natuurlijk alles te maken met de taal. Die verschilt nauwelijks van die van de Vikingen. Volgens componist Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson is dat een belangrijke reden voor de wat bizarre identiteit van de IJslanders.HILMAR ÖRN HILMARSSON: Part of the Icelandic identity is that we still have the roots to the old Eddas, the old religious poetry, the Icelandic Sagas, which are pretty unique literary constructs. I think preserving these things, preserving the language and preserving a way of thought - because I think our language shapes the way we look at things - that has made us special in a way and weird and wonderful in another way. Because we are trying to make the world Icelandic. We're trying to take the world into Iceland instead of going out into the world. And if we move out into the world, we do it as Icelanders.Ook in hun geloof zijn IJslanders heel eigenzinnig. Volgens de statistieken zijn de meeste mensen protestants. Maar het heidendom leeft nog heel sterk in IJsland. Het heet daar Asatru en is gebaseerd op oude natuurreligies.HILMAR ÖRN HILMARSSON: The old religion was polytheistic and nobody could really tell you how you practise your religion. You could choose one god, or many, or a god for every occasion. Lot of the religious practises were basically extremely individualistic. I think that has stayed with us. We don't like to confirm to any higher authority. And even when we were under Rome, all the bishops and priests were married and had children all over the place. Everything was practised in a very unique Icelandic way.Ook Hilmar is paganist. Hij is zelfs een soort hogepriester van dat informele en individualistische geloof. Iedereen kan zelf bepalen in wie of wat en hoe hij gelooft. Echt IJslands dus!Een andere belangrijke hogepriester van Asatru was Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson. Hij was een meester van de rímur, de traditionele zang van poëtische teksten.SIGGI BALDURSSON: It is poetry or basically stories in poetic form. Much like a lot of this Nordic culture has. Like the kalavala poetry in Finland, which are stories told in poetic forms. In Iceland the old way of chanting this has prevailed. This is the most prevalent form of folk music that we have. The melodies will differ and they will also change according to how the verses are, what kind of rhythm is in the verse.Dat was Siggi Baldursson, vroeger drummer bij The Sugarcubes en nu onder meer bezig met een wereldmuziekproject waarin ook die rímurtraditie wordt verwerkt. Siggi herinnert zich nog goed hoe Genenis P Orridge van de Britse groep Psychic TV veel bewondering had voor Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson.SIGGI BALDURSSON: I played at Genenis P Orridge's wedding, which Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson proceeded over at his place in the countryside. He lived in an ancient-looking farm in a valley way outside of Reykjavík in the countryside. He had sheep; he was a sheep farmer, a fantastic character. I brought a big kettle drum and he took them up to the altar. He had an altar of Thor, just up in the hillside, where he splashed some blood on the altar, he married them and I played the kettle drum. A great hoo-hah!

Dit is een stuk uit een ríma van de 18e eeuw, gezongen door een IJslandse boer in 1942. Als je de tekst niet verstaat, lijkt die rímurtraditie niet zo bijzonder, maar de IJslanders zijn er erg trots op. En dat is altijd zo geweest, op een bisschop na die in de 16e eeuw met een dik boek met psalmen de rímur probeerde te verdringen.HILMAR ÖRN HILMARSSON: The first book of psalms, in the prologue of that book, the bishop who wrote he hoped that this would do away with the wicked rímur, which were basically leading people away from God. Because these were lustful and disgusting poems which were about the flesh. And fighting and weird old heroic sagas and stuff. He hoped that these songs would lead people away from these disgusting old rímur chanting. But it never worked, fantastically enough. We still have this rímur tradition intact.Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson. Vorig jaar deed hij een project met Steindór Andersen, de voorzitter van de rímurvereniging in IJsland. Ook Erpur Eyvindsson deed mee, een rapper van groep Rottweiler. Rímur & rapp, zo heette die confrontatie. Erpur legt uit wat het was.ERPUR EYVINDARSSON: Hilmar Örn made up a song which was everything that he came up with when he thought of the concept of rhyming bridging many hundred years. Then Steindor came with rhymes, some of them many hundred years old and some rather new, but all in the old style. And we were just calling on each other. I with my new rhyming and he with his old rhyming, but just as Icelandic.

Stikluvik, een nummer van Steindór, Erpur en Hilmar Örn uit hun project Rímur & rapp vorig jaar. In IJsland was het een enorm succes bij jong en oud. Want rímur is in. Steindór bijvoorbeeld zingt zelfs in een reclamespotje. En voor Hilmar was het niet de eerste keer dat hij de traditie confronteerde met nieuwe geluiden. Met Sigur Rós en Steindór werkte hij rond verloren gewaande gedichten uit de Edda. Jammer genoeg is dat project nog niet uitgebracht. En 15 jaar geleden al speelde Hilmar een soort rímur-hiphop met Björk en Kukl-gitarist Gulli. Erpur is veruit de jongste in het rímur- en rapproject. Maar zijn groep Rottweiler ziet hij wel als een soort verlengde van de oude IJslandse rijmtraditie. Net zoals je overal ter wereld wel een of andere oervorm van rap vindt.ERPUR EYVINDSSON: The thing is that all cultures have some kinds of music or some kind of poetry which reminds of the modern rap. A monotonous beat is played and people are bringing poetry over it. My father is a poet and he has showed me lots of things. He is much into Icelandic history. He is one of the priests of the pagan society. He has always brought me and my brother up in Icelandic traditions, without being in any way arrogant against anybody else. But this at least is our culture and we really feel for it. This is our language, this is our culture, and we are, in some ways at least, proud of it.En natuurlijk rapt hij in IJslands en niet in het Engels.ERPUR EYVINDSSON: I made some lyrics in English. But I soon found out I think in Icelandic, so of course I rap in Icelandic. Especially because you are trying to be the best. And you know that you're much better in your own language than in English. Why are you trying to listen to rap to hear the slang? You've got your own slang! It's unnatural to listen to some other people making up slang for you to use. That's pathetic. You know, there are like millions of ghetto guys with so much talent rapping in English. They're just waiting to get a contract, doing everything to get a contract. Why the fuck should they go to Iceland and pick up a guy who is not even speaking the language fluently? Rapping in English to get famous abroad is a big joke, I think.

Dat was Blogga blogga uit de tweede cd van XXX Rottweiler Hundar, zo luidt de volledige naam van Erpurs band. Het is niet de eerste rapband in IJsland. En zeker niet de enige, want de scène in is volle bloei.Rottweilers debuut verscheen in 2001, bijna gelijktijdig met de eerste plaat van Sesar A, de broer van Erpur. Dat waren de enige twee IJslandse hiphop-cd's dat jaar. Een bescheiden oogst, maar wel een met veel impact. Want het jaar daarop verschenen er liefst 16 nieuwe hiphopplaten, bijna allemaal in het IJslands.VIVID BRAIN: That is something that Rottweiler did as well. Before Rottweiler there were just a few groups rapping in Icelandic. The topics were mostly taken from the American hip-hop culture. I think just basically everybody wanted to be black or something like that.Dat was Vivid Brain, alias Jon Magnus Arnarsson. Volgens Erpur van Rottweiler is Vivid Brain de beste rapper van IJsland. Grappig dat hij dat zegt, want ze zijn bij verschillende posses.VIVID BRAIN: In hip-hop now there a two rival groups. It's nothing big, nothing like the East Coast - West Coast conflict in the States, nothing like that. But it's kind of funny. And it's kind of fun as well to have some competition and to have not everybody on the same level and not everybody agreeing.De posse van Vivid Brain heet Greenfingers, net als het label en de opnamestudio die hij met een stel vrienden begon uit onvrede met de grotere labels in IJsland.VIVID BRAIN: It's just like a big crew and everybody just chips in 5000 or 10000 a month. With that money we can pay the rent of the studio and promote and record of course. We do it all ourselves because there is a lot of bullshit going on with the big labels when it comes to contracts. It looks like the labels don't take hip-hop very seriously, Icelandic hip-hop that is. And it's only young guys in it, so they tend to try to hustle something and try to give us lesser contracts or not as good contracts as they would with somebody else.

Dat was Móri van de Greenfingers posse. Zijn maat Vivid Brain heeft nog geen eigen cd, maar hij staat wel op allerlei compilaties.VIVID BRAIN: It's kind of a strange position that I hold up in Icelandic hip-hop. This is the only egoistic remark I'm going to make, but it's the only egoistic remark I allow myself because I do think that I am the best, or one of the best rappers. I just put more into the rhymes. I construct them better. I just take it more serious, I guess. I don't like rapping just for rapping. I try to make sense in my rhymes.But at the same time, because I take it so seriously, I won't jeopardise myself or what I believe in or what I rap about just to fit into some frame or whatever. That's the reason why I haven't recorded an album of my own yet. I don't want to release an album until it is perfect.

Hunter uit Homogenic van Björk. En als ze ooit een echt IJslandse plaat heeft gemaakt, dan is het deze wel.BJÖRK: I wanted to do distorted beats that sounded like volcanoes, because this was going to be my Icelandic album, you know, if there ever was one, with an Icelandic string octet and volcanic beats.Die beats maakte ze samen met Mark Bell van de Britse technoband LFO. Nog voordat The Sugarcubes waren opgedoekt, werkte ze al samen met Bell en ook met houseproducer Graham Massey. Björk wilde solo iets anders dan met haar vroegere bands. Maar het was méér dan alleen nieuwe paden verkennen. Het was alsof ze een eeuwenoud taboe doorbrak.BJÖRK: Because we were a colony for 600 years and very stubbornly kept our identity and language, without getting eaten up by foreign influences. Anything modern and foreign was evil. In 1990, when I wanted to spread my wings and work not only with foreigners but also do what was considered very modern at the time, electronic music for me was so different. It was like sleeping with an alien. You couldn't get into more scary or taboo territory. So that for me was a big part of my work. I am very, very Icelandic, but I am breaking a certain Icelandic taboo, which helped us survive for 600 years. But now it is time to communicate with foreigners.De muziek van Björk, Sigur Rós en múm is voor veel mensen de klank van IJsland, de perfecte soundtrack bij het beeld dat we kennen uit de toeristische folders. Het is alsof je de sneeuw onder je voeten hoort knisperen. Of als de wind die waait over een ruwe lavavlakte. Maar dat is allemaal onzin, vindt Thor, de labelbaas van Thule Musik.THOR SKULLASON: If you would put a picture of an Icelandic landscape and say "listen to this track of Worm is Green or Björk" and "it's very much like this picture", then you would say: "Oh yes, it's very much like this". But if you put a picture of a forest in Norway or France and say the same thing, it could also be the same thing. It all differs on what people know about Iceland.Maar Björk, múm en Sigur Rós hebben toch wel iets dat hen bindt. Alleen is dat is niet een link met de natuur of het landschap van IJsland, zegt Jonsi van Sigur Rós.JÓNSI BIRGISSON: The people that get some attention outside of Iceland are people who are quite independent in their own way of thinking and acting in life. They have a strong vision about what they want in their song writing and their soundscape, how they build up their sounds.Natuurlijk speelt de omgeving een rol. Maar het is een heel onbewust proces. Het kruipt in de muziek of je dat nu wilt of niet, zeggen Gunni en Örvar van múm.GUNNAR ÖRN TYNES & ÖRVAR THÓREYJARSON SMÁRASON: I think every environment you're in has an effect on you. And if you are in a special environment, which you feel connected to or like somehow, you feel an energy. How is the translation of nature to music accurate? It's of course something you imagine. And probably it's a really easy thing to imagine environment or rough nature like Iceland in music, but I think sometimes it's an easy way out. Like saying: "Yeah, this must be the nature that is doing this". And it's a very beautiful explanation. But when I hear people saying this, I always try to pinpoint the nature: "What is then the nature effect? Is it this hiss or the huss? Is it this note or that note?". I don't know. But if it affects us. We probably don't understand how it gets into the music.

Green grass of tunnel van múm uit de IJslandse versie van Finally we are no one, hun tweede cd. Een mooi voorbeeld van hoe elektronische blieps en blops ook iets magisch kunnen hebben. Voor filmcomponist Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson is dat typisch voor de IJslandse aanpak.HILMAR ÖRN HILMARSSON: Icelanders are latecomers to the industrial revolution. We never had the industrial revolution that Europe had. The whole modern times were trust on us in a span of very few years. Suddenly we came from the turf houses into modern buildings with electrical appliances and technology. Some of these things are still magical to us. I think in other places technology replaced religion, but we make the religion out of the technology. We approach technology in a very religious fashion. Because for us science equals magic. That may be one of the roots of that.Technologie als religie, misschien is dat wel de reden waarom de elektronicascene in IJsland zo groot en actief is. Elektronische muziek heeft bovendien iets bevrijdend, net zoals de jazz in de jaren vijftig. Het is een manier of los te raken uit het klassieke stramien van pop- en rocksongs, uit de hokjesmentaliteit van het commerciële circuit. IJslanders hebben lak aan labels en grenzen. Vrijheid, daar gaat het om bij de meeste muzikanten. Want dat ligt in hun rebelse aard.JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON: It is a rebellious nation originally. It was formed by Norwegian rebels who left Norway because they didn't get along with the kings there. It is sort of a colony of rebels.Dat zegt Jóhann Jóhannsson, een van de spilfiguren van Kitchen Motors.JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON: Kitchen Motors is very much about rebelling against these kinds of rigid structures that for example the marketplace imposes upon music. I think the work of Kitchen Motors is very much to try to work outside of these and break down these formats and these forms in some way.

Slaapkamermuzikant Kippi Kaninus, die naast dit elektronische knutselwerk ook nog zingt in een klassiek koor. The pianoplayer takes a bath kwam uit z'n debuut Huggun. Dat is de eerste plaat van een soloartiest op Kitchen Motors. Dat is niet alleen een label maar ook muzikantenorganisatie en creatieve denktank voor experimentele muziek. Het is de plek waar IJslandse artiesten zonder oorkleppen elkaar ontmoeten, zegt Jóhann Jóhannsson.JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON: We started out by talking about how there were all these great players in the city that we loved and we wanted to see them working together. There were all these players in different fields and we thought: "Why not bring them together and see if they can work with this thing that they had in common?". That's how we started Kitchen Motors: as a venue for these players to come together and try to work with their common ground and try to create something new out of this. So maybe Kitchen Motors puts a focus on this type of hybrid making or merging of things.Kitchen Motors organiseert elke maand een concert in het Living Arts Museum in Reykjavík. The safe house noemen ze het en het is hun laboratorium. En daarnaast bedenken ze graag evenementen die je niet snel vergeet. Zoals enkele weken geleden nog: toen presenteerde Kitchen Motors in Hasselt onder meer een symfonie voor zaklampen en videocamera's.KRISTIN BJÖRK KRISTJANSDOTTIR: We're a bit adventurous, I guess. We don't find it interesting to put on a simple gig. That's not us. We try to stretch the concept of a concert and kind of push its limits until we've got something new, something that lights our fires. And we like to drag all kinds of visual artists as well. They'll make a set for the stage. Or there'll be a band which consists of one musician and one visual artist and they're equally collaborating on some third element that becomes something new and funny. And yeah, we take pleasure in the absurd.Dat zegt Kristín Björk. Zij vormt samen met Jóhann Jóhannsson en Hilmar Jensson de kern van Kitchen Motors. Ze hebben elk een andere muzikale achtergrond, maar als ze samenkomen dromen ze hardop over de meest vreemde concepten. En die proberen ze dan te realiseren. Soms draait dat uit op een nachtmerrie en soms is het als een "dream come true". Een van hun grote projecten is de reeks Helvitis symphonies, telkens gewijd aan één instrument. De eerste aflevering was een stuk voor dertien gitaren onder leiding van Hilmar Jensson.HILMAR JENSSON: Jóhann and Kristín kept asking me: "How is the guitar piece coming along?". And I would always reply at that: "That helvitis symphony!", which means like "that goddamn symphony" or "that fucking symphony". So thus the name came about. And actually at the first rehearsal it sounded terrible, it sounded really bad. But it's a really strong experience.KRISTÍN BJÖRK KRISTJANSDOTTIRI think we ended up being 13 guitarists. We all had our amps but no effects really. And the power of the drone! It all ended in a great big E-drone. I was barefoot on the stage and it literally trembled and felt great. The trembling of 13 guitarists droning away. It also sounded amazing. It wasn't uncomfortable, overwhelming noise coming from "Helvitis". It had some beautiful character that was melting together from these 13 characters.

Dat was de Helvitis symphony no. 1 ­ of toch het laatste deel daaruit, want het hele ding duurt bijna een half uur. Naast Hilmar en Kristin deden nog elf andere gitaristen mee van onder meer múm, Sigur Rós en Singapore Sling. Zo'n project opzetten lijkt een hele toer, maar eigenlijk gaat dat allemaal vlot. Want ook al zijn er ontzettend veel muzikanten in IJsland, uiteindelijk is het maar een kleinschalige scene.HILMAR JENSSON: In general everything is small and everything is based on knowing a group of people around you. We can do things that you wouldn't be able to do in a bigger society. If we need a venue for something it is just one phone call away. If we need to have something written about it in the paper or talked about on the radio or published in any way, it's just one phone call away. And that is something that could not be done in a big city.KRISTÍN BJÖRK KRISTJANSDOTTIR: Opportunities to do things are at hand. It's a small city and it's easy to be a musician.En die kleinschaligheid bepaalt in zekere zin ook de muziek, zegt Kristín nog.KRISTÍN BJÖRK KRISTJANSDOTTIR: When it's easy to approach people to work with, then firstly that affects your music. You're working with anyone you like almost. He's in the phonebook. So you have this fantastic tuba solo in your piece. When you're living in New York you don't know how to find this tuba player. And you're without the tuba solo! Or you play it on your crappy midi sampler or something. Musical elements that you are on the hunt for are easier to find. Adventurous things like that are easier to go about here than in a bigger city. And that affects the music.

In the egg van Napoli 23, de nieuwe groep van Hilmar Jensson. Tien jaar geleden was er nauwelijks experimentele elektronische muziek in IJsland. Nu is het misschien wel de meest actieve scene daar. Een belangrijke katalysator was Andrew McKenzie van The Hafler Trio. Die Brit is al ruim twintig jaar bezig met elektronica. En begin jaren negentig kwam hij in IJsland wonen.KRISTÍN BJÖRK KRISTJANSDOTTIR: When he came he ignited a spark in Stillupsteypa and Curver and Reptilicus and all those artists that were coming up then.HILMAR JENSSON: I think he just brought in so much knowledge and so much enthusiasm into a scene that was quite fragile in its baby steps. These bands that were starting out, they didn't have the access to all this music at the time. There weren't stores like this one where we sit right now. It wasn't as easy to go on the internet and buy whatever you needed. And he had a lot of music; he had done a tremendous lot of recordings. And he had so much knowledge of how to do things and what the history of electronic music was. I think he basically inspired people so much.De platenzaak waar Hilmar het over had, is 12 Tónar, genoemd naar het 12-tonenstelsel van Schönberg. Maar eigenlijk is de winkel het mekka voor allerlei avontuurlijke muziek uit IJsland. Het wordt gerund door Lárus en Jóhannes en zij bieden iedere klant steevast een verse kop koffie aan. Dat hoort bij hun persoonlijke aanpak, net als de luie zetels en de stapel diskmans met grote koptelefoons om rustig naar cd's te luisteren. Muziek staat hier duidelijk op de eerste plaats, verkopen op de laatste.

Dat was nog Telefonia, een stuk voor gsm's en laptop. Het werd bedacht door Andrew McKenzie en Jóhann Jóhannsson en live gespeeld door Bibbi van Curver. Én door het publiek, want dat moest tijdens de uitvoering bellen naar een voicemailnummer. De boodschappen gingen dan de computer in en kwamen na allerlei processen in de zaal terecht. Het is een typisch voorbeeld van de gesofisticeerde aanpak van elektronische muziek. Maar er is ook nog die andere kant van de elektronica: de dance en techno. En dat is iets heel anders, zegt Biogen.BIOGEN: I think I come from a totally different part of the scene. Sophisticated electronic music like Kraftwerk and stuff, I didn't care. I was a teenager at the time of the rave revolution, so I got into a more club oriented scene and lived the scene instead of intellectually approaching it. I stumbled in there.Ook Biogen is een belangrijke pionier voor de IJslandse elektroscene. Hij deed remixen voor Sigur Rós en múm en maakte een paar platen voor Thule. Hij wordt wel eens vergeleken met Aphex Twin. Maar tegenwoordig houdt hij het liever bij zelfverpakte cdr's die hij verkoopt via 12 Tónar en enkele andere winkels. Samen met Thor Skullason zat hij in de jaren negentig in Ajax, een beruchte elektronische hardcoreband. Thor schuimt nu de wereld af als dj en ondertussen runt hij de zes labels van Thule Musik. Daarop verschijnen platen van groepen als múm, Kanada, Trabant en Apparat Organ Quartet. Maar ook techno en house. En die scene had in het begin een typisch IJslands geluid.THOR SKULLASON: The techno and house music scene, when that started, there was a special Icelandic sound. The reason is basically we did a lot of club music. But there were no clubs at the time. So we didn't get any feedback and we were just trying to make the best out of it as we knew of what we heard from the UK and America. We were always trying to do what they did, but didn't have the know-how of how things were actually done and how the reaction on the dance floor would be. Therefore we always misunderstood everything and therefore we made our own sound without knowing. Because of this mistake we made our own Icelandic techno and house.